When most people think of a library, they think of a building full of books that you can check out. But many libraries hold more than just books. As part of maintaining relevance and adapting in the digital age, some public libraries have taken to lending all manner of weird and wonderful items from knitting needles to baking pans to fishing poles—even telescopes!

Here are some of our favorite unusual library collections out there:

1. The Cornell University Witchcraft Collection, part of the library’s Division of Rare and Manuscript Collection, started in the 1880s. The collection’s focus is on witchcraft as religious heresy and theology, not as folklore or anthropology. It includes extremely rare works by theologians who opposed the Inquisition, and some of the earliest books on demonology and on witch hunts and their trials and persecutions..
2. The Robert A. Deshon and Karl J. Schlachter Library for Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning at the University of Cincinnati has an international snow globe collection, started in 1983 after a library employee returned from a trip to Florida with a souvenir.
3. The library at the University of Nevada Las Vegas has a stunning collection of showgirl photographs, costume drawings, and more.
4. Philadelphia’s famous (or infamous) Mütter Museum is a fascinating medical museum that contains an extensive collection of medical oddities, anatomical and pathological specimens, dramatic epidemiological exhibits, and other biomedical weirdness.
5. The New York Public Library knows we are fascinated by popular culture, and its many various collections extend far beyond books. The collection of Weird Tales magazine, a pulpy periodical first published in 1923, is one of its treasures.
6. The Mattel Toy Company library has a collection stored in a warehouse of all the types of toys and dolls produced by the company over its history.

   Written by: Barbara Maxwell and Tina Baker
   Image by: Milous at Depositphotos.com